La Jolla High and Muirlands Middle will switch to a later start time of 8:35 a.m. next school year.

La Jolla High School, Muirlands Middle School and the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts will switch to later start times to improve sleep health for students.

Beginning with the next school year, La Jolla High and Muirlands Middle will start at 8:35 a.m. and let out at 3:15 p.m., principals of the two schools announced in a letter to parents this week.

Currently La Jolla starts at 7:35 a.m. and Muirlands begins at 7:30 a.m.

“Having a healthy start time has been shown to increase attendance, test scores and graduation rates,” La Jolla High Principal Chuck Podhorsky and Muirlands Middle Principal Geof Martin wrote in the letter. “In addition, healthy start times lead to decreased rates of emotional and behavioral problems, including anxiety and depression, along with corresponding increases in social, academic and athletic performance.”

The principals cited research showing that later start times better align with sleeping patterns for adolescent students and thus help reduce sleep deprivation.

Last year, the San Diego Unified School Board voted to have an 8:30 a.m. or later start time for its high schools by 2020. The district’s high schools generally start around 7:30 a.m. Kearny is an exception and starts at 8:45 a.m.

Specific information on new start times for San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts was not available Friday. It is a magnet school in Paradise Hills.

While education officials tend to agree about the heath benefits of later start times for students, some have objected to universal late start times, saying they can complicate transportation and disadvantage students whose parents struggle to fit later start times into their working schedules.

“We realize there probably are going to be some challenges in the implementation,” said School Board Trustee John Lee Evans, who has led the district’s push for later start times. “We want people to have an opportunity to let the staff know what those challenges are so that we can work on them in time to do it in fall 2020.”